Wednesday, May 29, 2013

23 Campaign Concepts: Things I'd Like to Run

RUNNING THROUGH MY BRAINAs we get to the end of May, we begin to wrap up this month’s
RPG Blog Carnival theme “Campaigns I’d Like to Run.” You can see the announcement post here, with tons of links to great responses in the comments
there. You still have time to post a response if you have an idea. You can see
more on the RPG Blog Carnival here. Next week I’ll put together a organized
post which goes through all of the submissions- at least the ones I know about.

To finish up my contributions, I decided to write out all of
the little campaign brainstorms I’ve had recently. In the past when I’ve had
campaign change-overs I’ve done big lists of pitches for the players to
consider (you can see some here and here). For this list I’ve tried to get down
on the page all the random ideas I’ve had bouncing around. Ideally these are
all new to me- not featured on previous lists. Some of them are pretty fleshed
out, while others are more sketches or hooks that appeal to me. A few really
deserve a post of their own- and could be easily put together for play. I
suspect many of these will appear as Portal options if I get around to running
Ocean City Interface.

TWENTY-THREE FOOTPRINTS

1. Victorian
Shadowrun: A world with Steampunk technology, perhaps run rampant. Then the
weird mystical wave rolls through, changing things and returning magic and
creating the various fantasy races. We take up five or ten years on, with Queen
Victoria herself having been transformed. Perhaps take a different spin on the
fantasy races- borrow from For Faerie,
Queen, and Country or even Magicians
of England. Most importantly, bring in cyberspace by stealing the Etherscope VR concept. Cybertech might
be steam or might be more like Rippers.

2. Victoriana X-Men:
I fell in love with the X-Men during
the Byrne era, and I love it when it is more science-fiction or space opera
than conventional superheroics. I know some people despise Grant Morrison’s run
on the books, but he had some interesting sci-fi roots concepts. In any case,
this might be one of those hidden campaign seeds. For this you sell the premise
and it only becomes clearer as the campaign rolls along that it is something
else. Borrow a little bit from the Kerberos Club, but without a publicly recognized patron. Everyone has a singular
power, gifted by the Nimbus, a sign that appears when they use the powers.
They’re feared by the general public, but have been brought together in this
Victorian Era to fight for recognition. They battle secret steam scientists,
Martian invaders, updated monsters, and a cabal of Nimbus users who wish to
rule the world. Inspired more than a little by the Aaron Diaz's illustrations.

3. Superheroes Beyond:
I’m a big fan of Batman Beyond and
I’d love to do a campaign which riffs on that. For years I ran a Watchmen-style
vigilante campaign. One of the last iterations of that was more Cyberpunk than supers. I don’t
necessarily want the grit of that. I like the four-color, slightly darkened
version of the world presented in the TV Show- with ubiquitous tech and legacy
heroes. Ideally I would run this as a sequel to another supers campaign. That
would allow me to play with existing characters and give the players some
buy-in to the setting. Perhaps a substitute version could be created by using Microscope to build a history?

4. Ghost Worlds:
Characters wake up in a Silent Hill-esque
world. Realize they’ve been stolen from the real world and have to make their
way back through obstacles and tricks. A surreal fantasy or horror land. The
hook is that when they sleep, they have visions of the real world and see the
nefarious plots the possessors of their bodies are undertaking.

5. WoD Fantasy: I
kind of like the nWoD system for its simplicity. I wonder if you couldn’t strip
things down and use it to do a more classic or directed fantasy game. Magic
could easily be lifted from Contracts in Changeling
or Spells in Mage. Some of the combat
options in Machine God Chronicle
might make that decently easy.

6. Crime &
Punishment: A superhero game with an odd twist that justifies some of the
problems of a classic comic book world. Supervillains have some common origin-
an incident, a recurring genetic event, or something else. The world’s done
relatively gritty in relation to them. The problem is that if supervillains are
killed, they come back- sometimes in a new form, sometimes not. They take over
someone’s body or something. Perhaps more like a Time Lord reincarnation in a
different place- and something they’re not enamored of. Regenerating isn’t any
fun. The only option is incarceration, but like Arkham Asylum, it is only a
matter of time before they break out.

7. Adventure People:
I’ve been thinking about how one could run a solid spy game in the 21st Century. One idea is to go totally retro and run a campaign set in the ‘60’s or
‘70’s. Night’s Black Agents has
another approach- suggesting the breakdown of order and the establishment of a
new apolitical foe in the form of the undead. Then there’s Spycraft’s competing agencies, which has some appeal- cool code
names, weird factionalism, and more a sense of super-villainy than practical
espionage. But if you’re going to create a cartoonish version of the world for
these kinds of stories, why not go all the way? This campaign would be about
super-spies, action heroes, and high weirdness. It would essentially be The Venture Brothers rpg. Ideally I’d get
the players to create a tight-knit yet dysfunctional unit. They’d go on a mix
of research, exploration, and counter-espionage missions. Everything would be
over the top and insane. Ideally I’d use something with plenty of room for
adaptation and improvisation, like FATE.

8. No Man’s Land: Dark Knight Rises borrowed liberally
from a number of comic arcs, including bizarrely enough "No Man’s Land." In that
long, long, multi-book event arc, Gotham’s struck by natural disasters, goes
into anarchy, and is declared no longer part of the US. It becomes isolated, ala
Escape from New York, and things go downhill from there. All of the “Bat
Family” and their extended titles end up spending a year trying to establish
and maintain order against lawlessness and gangs, many backed by
arch-criminals. There’s some interesting stuff in the series, but most of it is
messy and more nonsensical than most. That aside, it does offer rich territory
for stories.

I ran a super campaign set in New Orleans once. It had been
devastated by Katrina and then by a massive supervillain attack. That later
disaster had been at least partly the fault of superheroes. One of the themes
of the campaign was about restoring faith in superheroes. But it ended up being
more conventional. I’d like to do a campaign which aims squarely at
reconstruction. The characters first have to reclaim the city from lawlessness
(ala NML) and then help with rebuilding. Along the way they will make
themselves a symbol of one kind or another. Would probably work best as a
street-level superhero game.

9. Space Station Zebra

I like Ashen Stars which offers the players a ship as a
shared resource. But on the other hand, I like players having a static “home”
they can live in and interact with. That’s why I run so many city-based games
(a rut I perhaps need to break out of). I wonder if I could do a “first season”
of Ashen Stars where the players patrol and protect a space-station or a
particular planet. It might be a little like Space Precinct. It could be done as a vetting process- with the PCs
then getting a ship to take out for adventures. I’d be borrowing more than a
little from DS9 and Babylon-5.

10. Abstract Suikoden

I really love the idea of the Suikoden video games. In most
cases the players begin as members of the orderly society, but then get pushed
out. They have to find their own course and become heroes. Within that set up
we have two key elements: 1) the establishment of a base which can be expanded
and 2) the recruitment of many NPCs for support and active roles. With the
latter, some require conversations to recruit, others storyline actions, and
some optional side-quests. I think a campaign explicitly built on that model
could be fun. Once players build up enough people, they could begin to send
them out on resource & objective missions, increase their reach still
further.

11. What Doom?

I’d like to run a post-apocalypse/crash game with a couple
of distinctions. One, what happened wouldn’t be certain. Either the nature or
the source of the disaster would be uncertain. Related to that mystery would be
figuring out how to live and deal with that threat. I’m not sure how to set
that up- some kind of shelter, cryogenics, or shared amnesia. Two, the game
would be a building game- with the community having a central hub: facility,
ship, caravan, which would need resources and development. Three, the game
would be run online, with reservations and a revolving cast- depending on
players and characters (like if they got killed they’d miss a session or
something).

12. Conspiracy X-Com

My friend Steve beat me to the punch a little with his very
cool campaign idea, Fight the Future. I like his approach. I’ve also been
thinking about how you could bring the X-Com experience to the game table. I’d
do that by making the first part of it more like ConX, stripping out everything
except for the alien portions of it. In any operation, you’d go in first as
investigation agents to check things out. Once the threat had been assessed,
then the team can gear up and head in for an assault. Another way to play that
might be for everyone to have two characters. The investigator and the squad
member. That could be particularly cool.

13. Build-a-Bugbear

Extra Credits has
mentioned the concept of making even mundane mechanics/sub-systems interesting
through novel play mechanics. I’ve mostly done building games through resource
management and menu choices. (OK, we’ll spend on building the fortress up
rather than the farm fields; OK I spend my Green Mana to make this Magical
Cake). I’d like to figure out some mechanics which would make building things-
crafting, nation-building, alchemy, community development- more interesting.
Reign has dimensions to track with some of those concepts, but I wonder if I
can develop an engaging sub-game that doesn’t distract. That’s one of the
things I admire most about the video game Puzzle
Quest. They take the basic concepts and them modify and switch them up for
several of the sub-games.

14. The Future Will
Destroy You

What if magical power was discovered and developed, but you
had to be kind of a dick to use it. To harness the true forces, you had to be a
selfish person. (A little like Unknown Armies, but even more out there). That’s
the classic model of the Evil Wizard from Conan. Transplant that to a modern
setting where douchebag, slacker, and emo sorcerors have managed to destroy
society. The players would be Conan-like post-apocalypse barbarian avengers
with guns.

15. Luchadore Hunters

I’ve just started watching Supernatural; only though the end of the first season. The show isn’t
great yet- but there’s a vibe I really like to it. I love the road-trip and
Americana feel to it. Going through the backroads with occasional stop offs in
major places, tracking things through rumors and bits of apocrypha, and a weird
network of supernatural hunters. I’m also a fan of Hunter the Reckoning- in the many different flavors it presents,
from long-suffering lunatics to superhero vampire slayers. I’d like to do a HtR
campaign with a different origin for powers, a campaign that borrows stylistically
from Supernatural and thematically
from Lucha Libre. The PCs would be hunters to the weird and strange. They’d
roll into town and look into matters. And when they figured out what was going
on- that’s when the masks would come out. By donning those, they’d gain the
powers they need to fight evil. The Masks would be unique- each with a story to
them. The PCs would put down the monsters and then hop in their car for the
next town.

16. Steampunk OTE

Way back in 1997, Pyramid Magazine published “An Assignation
with Her Exaltedness” offering ideas for using Over the Edge with Castle
Falkenstein. That remains a supremely awesome idea; steampunk fits
perfectly with Al Amarja. But I don’t think I would necessarily use the CF
backdrop. I might build something of my own- stripping the best ideas from
various steamtech rpgs. I’d want something a little grittier and with some odd
tech, so The Kerberos Club and Etherscope for example. It would be fun
to do twists on the various ideas- perhaps the Kergillians look more like
something from War of the Worlds? The
weirdness of the Cut-Ups would be closer to their original surrealist origins
(though that’s a post-Victorian invention).

17. Skyship 7th Sea

I have to admit that someone’s comment on G+ inspired this.
I had one of those “why didn’t I think of that…” moments. I like the
world-building in 7th Sea- the nations are interesting and
well-done. Like L5R 7th Sea manages to riff on history, but make it
fantastic enough that players find it open and inviting. But a sea-based, for
example pirate game felt limiting to me. I wanted the chance to explore the
whole of the map while keeping the ship theme. Now with skyships I can do that-
perhaps steamtech, perhaps magic, perhaps a combination of both. Players can
have their raids and sailing, but still travel to the distant hinterlands. And
I’ve been thinking that you could keep sea ships as well with their being too
great a disparity. Skyships would have sails which only worked in the absence
of wind- an inverse sympathetic magic. The greater the wind, the slower they
would go. Storms would becalm them. They would also be vulnerable to the
presence of water- too much close by would negate their effect. This would mean
such sails couldn’t be used on water. Storms could also be dangerous as they
could bring too much water close by. I imagine there would be airships, sea
vessels, and then those ships which could change sails. I have to think more
about the impact of that….

18. Witless Minions

I have two versions of this that I’d like to actually get
around to running. On the one hand, there’s the version I created for one ofthe 24-Hour RPG contests a couple of years ago. I’m actually pretty fond of it.
I like to think that it didn’t do as well because it came later in the
alphabet, but that’s rationalizing. Still it offers cool and adaptable ideas-
and would be worth going back to rewrite and expand. I’d use that if I want a
more action-oriented approach with capers and such. On the other hand, if I
wanted a more narrativist approach, I’d return to the DramaSystem frame I wrote
up- Malign, Inc. I like the idea of that being done as a BBC miniseries.

19. Arclight Revelation
Tianmar

I like the concept of this RPG I wrote- steampunk,
post-Martian Invasion, anime school life contrasted with secret adventures in
mecha suits. What’s not to like? I’d like to explore this world a little more
and figure out how the rest of humanity lives. To do so I’d probably need to go
back and take a hard look at the mechanics I came up with. One of the requirements
of the 24-Hour design process is to come up with a new system. That doesn’t
necessarily mean I came up with the best one for the genre. I like some of the
systems- especially the character creation ideas.

20. A War on Christmas

The other DramaSystem pitch I wrote appeared on the Pelgranesite. I put that together in a few hours, but it feels surprisingly compelling
to me. The idea of underground revolutionaries battling against a land run by a
power-mad Santa Claus appeals to me. Honestly, I would watch a show like that-
especially a BBC miniseries with that premise. This could also be a nice break
mini-campaign to run around the holidays. With some planning, it could be quite
amusing.

21. Microscope Supers

So far most of our experience with Microscope has centered
on fantasy worlds- of the dozen times I’ve played it (either for campaign
creation or as a game of its own), only once have we done sci-fi. I’m really
curious about what a collaborative superhero universe would look like. My first
thought was to set some boundaries- like tracing events from post WW2 on. But
the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of anything goes. Start at
the beginning of time with Eternal-like creatures? Or perhaps a more modern evolution-
with supers arising out of a conflict like Vietnam? I’m curious to see origins-
singular or multiple. I always think of supers as a genre requiring a certain
amount of experience and buy in. But what might it look like with people who
aren’t as into it crafting the background?

22. Colony Six Has
Fallen

One of two ideas I had for Game Chef that I didn’t write up.
This one borrows heavily from the concepts behind the video game FTL and the
rpg Fringeworthy. The player’s space exploration/empire proceeded through a
series of gates or warp points. The PC party is at the end of a long chain of
that exploration, when something goes wrong- some kind of attack or catastrophe
which disrupts the system. Now the party has to make their way back- with
incomplete information about where the gates exit to or what has happened on
the other side. When the group heads through, they have to find the next egress
point and carry out whatever tasks are necessary for repairs or analysis. While
the gates and events would be episodic, the spine of the game would be about
resource management. Equipment break-down, loss of NPCs, diminishing supplies,
etc. Eventually the use of the most powerful things found would be a critical
choice. Ideally going through a gate would allow a choice to the players based
on some scattered info they could obtain.

23. Bad Robot, Worse
Robot

In a future time, people will work together to build some
cool cyborgs. Of course they get out of hand- and in a Blade Runner-like move they’re made illegal and destroyed. But some
still exist- blending in with humanity. These have been made by strange
eccentric scientists (ala Mega Man, Astro Boy, or other secret robot families).
The PCs would be good robots, trying to protect humanity, maintain their
secrecy, and battle against the bad robots. Well, most of the PCs would be. At
the start of the game, assuming four players, the GM would shuffle five red and
one black card. Each player gets one card, if they get a black one, then they’re
actually a bad robot. In play, if all the other players agree- they can grab
the remaining player and “reverse his polarity” making them good if bad…and
vice-versa. The game would be about a mix of social challenges (going to
parties, trying to avoid eating too much, understanding human emotions) and
fighting off bad guys in set-piece battles. Good robots would always have the
option of solving problems through brute force- usually with collateral damage
in human lives. But they want to do things with more finesse. Characters would
have a Stress and a Suspicion track.